Europeans Weigh Impact of Single EC Currency Economic Integration Will Make Day-to-Day Conduct of Business in Europe Easier

Article excerpt

PHILIP Jenkinson may be British, but he lives in France, and as a
business attorney he has clients in all 12 countries of the European
Community.

For Mr. Jenkinson, the process of economic integration under way
among the EC's 12 member states - a process that is gradually
reducing inflation- and interest-rate disparities, and thus making
for a more stable, Europewide economy - can't help but be good for
business.

The eventual goal of a single EC currency, he says, will also
make conducting business easier - right down to facilitating the
traveling he must do to keep his clients informed and his business
growing.

"Imagine setting out from Vermont on a business trip around New
England," says the Lille attorney, "and having to remember to
maintain three or four purses of different currencies."

The EC's single market is set to take full effect at the end of
December 1992. Yet for people like Jenkinson, and for political
leaders who want to see Europe's international economic influence
enhanced, that is not enough.

EC leaders have thus decided to move forward with creating the
economic and monetary tools that are still needed for the single
market to develop its full potential. Last month in Rome, all heads
of state but one - Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -
agreed to a 1994 start for the next stage of the Community's
economic integration.

As of that date, a European central bank similar to the United
States' Federal Reserve System is to be set up, and steps for
further reducing some still-wide discrepancies among EC economies
are to be implemented.

Yet while the decision to push ahead on economic and monetary
union - what is simply called EMU - has been taken, the details
remain to be worked out.

This will be done at an intergovernmental conference set to begin
Dec. 13 in Rome. The composition and governance of the "Eurofed," as
the European Central Bank is already called, has been established.
How it will work with national central banks, and when it should
take over monetary responsibilities from them - has not.

"The decisions to be taken are mostly of a technical nature,"
says Daniel Gros, a senior research fellow at the Center for
European Policy Studies in Brussels. …